#9 The Sound of Silence

Well, we have crossed the 1/3 mark with me and minternational living out our mid-life crisis in a cheap and harmless manner...

I went through a minor Simon & Garfunkel stage a long, long time ago. This song remained lodged somewhere in my head. There's something about it that seems to stop time, with a spine-tingling effect.

I'm sure it must be locked into its 60s cultural background, but to me it is a song which seems to fit many times and moments: that sense of dislocation, and isolation and search for meaning. The idea that things fall apart but maybe in the sound of silence the centre can hold.

Or maybe that's nothing to do with it and I've been overdoing the herbal throat tablets.

However, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway wall", whatever it means, gets me every time.

Here it is.

Watts: public prayer

A man ought not to be so confined by any premeditated form as to neglect any special infusion, he should so prepare himself as if he expected no assistance, and he should so depend upon divine assistance as if he had made no preparation.

Isaac Watts, A Guide to Prayer

Ortberg: evaluation

On one hand, some people refuse to ask any questions about effectiveness at all, on the grounds that facing up to ineffectiveness would just be too painful. They run on the "if I can help one fainting sparrow back to the nest, it will all have been worth it" standard, a standard by which it is very hard to fail.

If I'm not good at something, it's best to find it out clearly and early, grieve my inadequacy, and move on to more fertile possibilities. How many congregations—and pastors—and pastor's spouses—live in misery year after year because someone won't face the truth about where their gifts do and do not lie. How many of us don't grow because we are afraid of honest feedback. Truth is always our friend.

On the other hand …

Is there anything we don't evaluate to death? And I suspect the reason is that we are desperate to make sure we are perceived to be successful.

Yea, though we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Performance, we will take another survey.

John Ortberg, CT Leadership, 16th February 2009

Calvin: comfort of providence

Calvin's discussion of providence is fascinating. He is trying to deal with the same kinds of questions that anyone today would, who believes in the sovereignty of God and yet also sees cause and effect as a reality and not charade. Overall, it reinforces my growing sense that the only way I can get through the question without my brain catching fire, is to say that God is absolutely sovereign AND AT THE SAME TIME life, decisions, consequences etc are all also authentic. I'm placing it in the same category as a number of other issues, which deal with the interface between time/humanity/finite reality and God/eternity/mystery.

But here's a great thing about Calvin (apart from his freedom in calling opposers rude names and not feeling bad about it): there is in his systematics a constant pastoral aim. So here's a bit that I liked:

And since it is uncertain what will be the outcome of the business he is undertaking (except that he knows that in all things the Lord will provide for his benefit), he will aspire with zeal to that which he deems expedient for himself, as far as it can be obtained by intelligence and understanding. Yet in taking counsel he will not follow his own opinion, but will entrust and submit himself to God's wisdom, to be directed by his leading to the right goal. But his confidence will not so rely upon outward supports as to repose with assurance in them if they are present, or, if they are lacking, to tremble as if left destitute. For he will always hold his mind fixed upon God's providence alone, and not let preoccupation with present matters draw him away from steadfast contemplation of it.

Institutes, 1.17.12 (Battles p.222)
empahsis added.

-charist

I heard about U2charists a couple of years ago, and had forgotten all about them til this (INMHO) great comment at Ref21.

I wish I had thought of that! But I didn't, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon now.

I would like to propose The Huey-Lewis-&-the-Newscharist: where a lot of middle-aged men dressed as Marty Mcfly proclaim in music and movement that God is The Power of Love, that the church should resist enculturisation because, as we all know, It's Hip to be Square; where we can share our wealth because We're Doing it All (for my baby), whilst feeling confident in the preservation of the saints (as we're Stuck With You), and restore Golden Bells to its rightful place, because we want to Get Back in Time.

Well, as someone says, you get the idea with that. Feel free to contribute a -charist in a comment!

Calvin: providence

...God's providence does not always meet us in its naked form, but God in a sense clothes it with the means employed.

Institutes 1.17.4 (Battles p.216)

#8 No Myth

Music became all pervading from around 1984 to the early 90s; it's not really much less so now, it's just that gradually it stopped being the thing which filled up the empty bits of my life - as Jesus, the Bible and actual real people began to do that. By 1989 this process was yet new and frail! So I was still buying CDs on a weekly basis, reading Record Collector, spending non-working Saturday mornings at the second hand record shop (I got a copy of "The Rock Encyclopaedia", and was reading through, buying stuff along the way) - and watching music programmes.

One morning I saw a video for a song, and went out and bought the CD. The album was March by Michael Penn (yep, Sean Penn's brother). It's a worthwhile and unusual album, and the single was "No Myth". What a great song. I have absolutely no idea what it's about, even after 20 years, but it's just great. With this chorus:

what if I were Romeo in black jeans
what if I was Heathcliff,
it's no myth
maybe she's just looking for
someone to dance with

and a bridge like this:

Sometime from now you'll bow to pressure
some things in life you cannot measure
by degrees;
I'm between the poles and the equator
don't send no private investigator
to find me please
'less he speaks Chinese
and can dance like Astaire overseas

What more could you want? Here's the track ; and here's the video - but please give it a couple of listens before watching, so you can get your own idea of it - the video sort of sticks in the mind. I saw it once 20 years ago, and can remember it (but then my head is like a useless- information magnet), especially the bit where you find out where the band is located...

Calvin: future dreams?

Indeed, sleep itself, which benumbs man...suggest not only thoughts of things that have never happened, but also presentiments of the future.
Institutes, 1.15.2 (Battles p185)

#7 The Way It is

Somewhere between minternational's last one and John Reuben, lies the period of my life when I discovered music. I'd had bits and pieces and a fad of rock'n'roll prior to this, but somewhere around 14 years of age it started to take on an importance almost equivalent with books, as I wasted my formative years hidden in my bedroom. Listening to new stuff on Radio 1 (all of which would now only be played on Radio2!), joined the tape library and started obsessively pirating tapes, borrowing albums (likewise ripped off), all started here.

But this one I bought because I really liked it, and arrived home with the album.

There was something eery about the piano riff, and compelling about the virtuoso playing; the album seemed to waft warm American plains-country into my stuffy room; and the subject matter was really the first inkling of something which is now a big interest: slavery, the slave trade, the civil rights movement.

So here it is: redolent of the warm summer evenings of my youth!

And while I'm at it, I'd also recommend Across the River.

#6 Nuisance

I probably wouldn't have a John Reuben album on my list, because (to me) they're too patchy. BUT he has produced some top singles over the last years.

OK so it probably seems unlikely that there would be rap in my list...but that 1995 album, previously referred to, started chipping away at my certainty that rap wasn't really music. And then I heard a single on a sample CD which I thought was great. The single was Do Not by John Reuben, so I got the album as an introduction to a music company. John Reuben is a Jewish Christian rapper from Ohio - and he is sometimes brilliant and often funny.

Anyway, this post probably should have been Do Not, but I've gone with the more accessible, Nuisance (2005) - which is not available on Lastfm, so here's the video. It's also cheerful!

One thing about him is the way he takes a 180 degree direction from a lot of rap, which is often self-centred on the artist. Instead, there's a lot of humility and fun in Reuben's stuff.

But please also try Do Not; and if you need a bit of encouragement, try No Regrets and Hindsight (sorry, can't find a track for this on the net).

Watts: heaven reaching back

Just read the hymn "Come we that love the Lord" and this verse called out an echo inside:

The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweets,
Before we reach the heavenly fields,
Or walk the golden streets.

Isaac Watts

Gregory on the Trinity

I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendour of the three; nor can I discern the three without bring straightway carried back to the one.

Gregory of Nanzianzus, quoted Institutes 1.13.17 (Battles, p141)
originally from On Holy Baptism

#5 Avalon

Same era as minternational's last, but a bit of a different style...

This could have been Streetlife or Oh Yeah or maybe Slave to Love - but Avalon I think is the one, if I was stranded (hahahahaha) that I would take from Roxy Music.

Nostalgia: I first heard it on Moonlighting, of all things, when at the start of an episode, everything suddenly goes to slowmotion as Bruce Willis, entering the office lift, turns to watch a woman pass him by and grab the lift ahead of him. I didn't know, but it was Demi Moore whom he had just married and was a kind of Hollywood injoke. But the music stayed in my head; and later when picking up a cheap copy of the Best of Roxy Music, there it was.

So for 20-odd years it's been a one of those atmospheric, laid-back but slightly (typically Bryan Ferry) bittersweet songs.

Anyway, Lastfm bizarrely links to some other song by someone else, so here's the video (which is OK, but doesn't help much).

Yancey: contrast for compassion

The same week that global wealth shrank by $7 trillion, Zimbabwe's inflation rate hit a record 231 million percent. In other words, if you had saved $1 million Zimbabwean dollars by Monday, on Tuesday it was worth $158. This sobering fact leads me to the third and most difficult stage of prayer in crisis: I need God's help in taking my eyes off my own problems in order to look with compassion on the truly desperate.

(as below)

Yancey: economic collapse

If I pray with the intent to listen as well as talk, I can enter into a second stage, that of meditation and reflection. Okay, my life savings has virtually disappeared. What can I learn from this seeming catastrophe? In the midst of the financial news, a Sunday school song kept running through my mind:

The wise man built his house upon the rock …
And the wise man's house stood firm.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand …
Oh, the rain came down, and the floods came up.

A time of crisis presents a good opportunity to identify the foundation on which I construct my life. If I place my ultimate trust in financial security or in the government's ability to solve my problems, I will surely watch the basement flood and the walls crumble.

A friend from Chicago, Bill Leslie, used to say that the Bible asks three main questions about money: (1) How did you get it? (Legally and justly or exploitatively?); (2) What are you doing with it? (Indulging in luxuries or helping the needy?); and (3) What is it doing to you? Some of Jesus' most trenchant parables and sayings go straight to the heart of that last question.

Philip Yancey, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/january/29.80.html

#4 The Edge

A bit early for the benefit of board members, here's number 4. Ooh it's becoming a struggle! The things I have to leave out or push onto the hypothetical album list!

Anyway...I used to have a very poor view of Christian music, for two reasons: in the late 80s a lot of Christian music available in the UK was poor. Newly converted, for me the thought of a smiling Christian wearing a guitar on a rainbow strap was fearful - give me proper secular stuff. The second reason grew out of the first: the almost subconscious conclusion that all Christian music was tame or bad or cheesy or basically pants. And this is the real problem, because I found that actually there are really decent, professional, talented Christian musicians - but a lot of people cease judging the music on its merits and write it off because of it's religious atmosphere, afraid of being associated with it. More fool them.

With some symmetry, there were also two things that changed my view. The first was Michael Card - a theologian-poet who did not fill albums with "Jesus we love you, yes we do, we really do, honest etc etc" and his tunes were good too (not much oomph - that came with the second thing, in 1995, and the album that probably changed Christian music forever).

So, he's not big on energy, but also no cheese, no lack of musical ability, no soppy lyrics. Instead: depth, meaning, warmth, reality. Of several songs I could choose, the one I would hold on to (especially on a desert island) is The Edge (1994). It sounds good, but takes suicide as its theme, yet in the most hopeful way: it's the song of someone who came close to the edge but has seen it as a lie - reality is God, His promises and a better persepective than times of darkness permit. It's a good song for any dark time, when we start to feel failure is inevitable, and need to realse God wants us to fight...

I promise I will always leave
The darkness for the light.
I swear by all that's holy
I will not give up the fight.
I'll drink down death like water
Before I ever come again
To that dark place where I might make
The choice for life to end.